In December, the United States Department of Commerce released a report on Internet privacy calling for a new “Privacy Bill of Rights” that would protect consumers online “while ensuring the Internet remains a platform that spurs innovation, job creation, and economic growth.”
In order to improve its recommendations, the Department of Commerce opened up its report to public review and comment. Since then, a diverse combination of corporations and consumer advocacy groups have responded to the Commerce Department’s request and shared comments on the report with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Here at Reputation.com, where we have been involved in high-level debates on the important issue of Internet privacy since our inception in 2006, we also put together comments on the Commerce Department’s report. Our report focuses on the role that private companies can have in spurring the economy by delivering consumer privacy protections, thus eliminating the need for overly aggressive government regulations.
Here are some of Reputation.com’s key points from the report:
- Comprehensive online privacy solutions need to address multiple classes of privacy relationships.
- Direct privacy relationships can be enhanced through negotiation-enhancing FIPPs (Fair Information Practice Principles) and technologies.
Last week, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik was in Davos, Switzerland for the 2011 World Economic Forum. During his time in Davos, Michael participated in multiple panels on the important issues of Internet privacy and cybercrime, and also chatted with experts on global development, the cost of food, energy independence, and dozens of other major world issues.
Before the long flight home to California, Michael took part of his last day in Davos to film a video talking about what he learned at the World Economic Forum and all of the positive discussion he had regarding data privacy and online security. Check out the video below.
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In addition to filming a last-minute Davos Diary, Michael Fertik also shared his thoughts on what he learned at the World Economic Forum in a special column for the Washington Post. Check out Michael’s full article for the Post below.
So what did I learn at Davos? I came here with a mission to represent the needs of privacy and reputation on the Internet and excited about the prospect of the World Economic Forum’s strong interest in cyber security.
This week strongly exceeded my expectations.
CEOs of companies in healthcare, Internet, infrastructure, hardware, software telecommunications and media, together with regulators from the United States and Europe, embraced important ideas including:
- End users should control their personal data.
- Huge revenue streams are possible from novel ways to monetize personal data that also directly compensate consumers for access to their information.
- Companies are increasingly targets of sophisticated organized crime on the Internet.
- Cyber warfare is a real and growing threat to state institutions and businesses.
- Powerful tools are required to solve each of the above.
None of these issues was either on the table or high profile as recently as a year ago. Engagement with them represents a significant achievement for the congress here in Davos and an essential step forward for the private and public interests that depend on their resolution.
This is a constant fight. In most areas of technology, there is an underlying assumption that the device’s functionality is binary: It either works or it doesn’t. You flip the switch, and the light goes on. If it doesn’t, that means that the bulb is out or the circuit breaker needs a quick reboot. You fix it and move on. In other words, in most technical questions, the process of innovation comes down to figuring out how to defeat specific obstacles, defeating them and never having to revisit them. It’s different in cyber security. Threats to digital data appear, reappear, adapt and reappear again. Solutions must adapt as nimbly. On the panel on which I participated this morning, one of my co-panelists referred to it as an arms race. That is a typical and apt analogy.
Threats to privacy and security evolve with blistering speed. That speed is accelerating further with the exponential proliferation of access points to the Internet like smartphones and tablets. Every dinosaur game app you download can (and probably does) access huge amounts of information on your phone that are totally unrelated to the actual functioning of the game. A simple game app can mine your phone numbers, emails, addresses, calendar and geo-location. In the anti-virus field, they call that a Trojan horse. When it comes to social media, though, the public still just thinks of it as a game. But that game can compromise you, your family, or your company.
I am leaving Davos encouraged. The work remains. It always remains. But the will is there.
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the increasing competition between Facebook and Google, why teens don’t want to be friends with their parents online, and how one dating website’s security error opened up access to millions of passwords and other sensitive user data.
This article form the Wall Street Journal explains how Google is working to fight off Facebook, which is rapidly growing to threaten Google’s dominance in the search industry. As James B. Stewart explains in the column, the goal of both Facebook and Google is to be the “point of entry for Web users, the theory being that whoever controls the gateway will deliver the most effective advertising platform.” In their efforts to achieve this goal, both Google and Facebook have taken some liberties with personal privacy protections. As the competition between Google and Facebook gets more fierce, privacy advocates should be on the lookout for violations of user privacy.
A recent survey from Kaplan Test Prep revealed that “more than a third of teens whose parents are on Facebook have not agreed to friend them. Of this group, nearly 40 percent had simply ignored their parent’s request, leaving them in Facebook limbo.” This article from the Kansas City Star talks to several teens and gets their explanation for why they don’t want to friend their parents online. It also offers several tips for parents on how to use Facebook without embarrassing their children.
The free dating website PlentyofFish.com was hacked last week, exposing the e-mail addresses, usernames, and passwords of millions of users. The alleged hacker claims he wasn’t hacking at all, but merely pointing out a security flaw in the website. Plenty of Fish has reset all user passwords and closed the exploitation, but anyone who has used the site should be on guard against identity theft and should make it a point to change their other account passwords.
Facebook recently announced a new advertising scheme called Sponsored Stories, which allows companies to sponsor a user comment or status update that mentions its brand. Currently, there is no way for users to opt out of Sponsored Stories, leading many privacy advocates to call on Facebook to make a change before it is rolled out to the site’s nearly 600 million users.
In a reasoned column for the San Jose Mercury News, Internet safety advocate Larry Magid criticizes Facebook’s Sponsored Stories plan saying, “There is a difference between letting your friends know you like something and allowing a company or organization to include it in a paid advertisement, regardless of how limited that ad’s audience might be. While I wouldn’t call it an invasion of privacy, I would call it a form of commercial exploitation.”
For Magid, the issue isn’t privacy, but context. You may choose to share your dining experience with friends on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean that you endorse the restaurant. In this case, the context of what you shared matters. Magid argues that taking away the context of a user’s updates may have a “chilling effect” on the use of Facebook’s “like” button.
On Friday in Davos, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik moderated a panel on personal data privacy. Today at the World Economic Forum, Fertik participated in another tech panel, this time focused on the issue of cybercrime and cybersecurity.
During the panel, noted Internet and security experts talked about the growing threat of sophisticated cybercriminals and how cybercrime and cyberwarfare is a new reality of the Internet age. More important than acknowledging the problem, however, was acknowledging the solution to the problem: a powerful alliance between government and business leaders that focuses on prevention, and also on adapting quickly to new threats.
Michael Fertik will be sharing additional notes on this panel later today, and we will have them here for you on the Reputation.com Blog. In the meantime, follow Michael on Twitter for last-minute insights into the closing days of Davos.
Today in Davos, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik joined fellow World Economic Forum Tech Pioneers Trip Adler from Scribd and Jose Ferreira from Knewton in the Social Media Corner to chat with Facebook’s Director of Market Development Randi Zuckerberg.
The trio talked about their impressions of the World Economic Forum and their respective “Davos” moments. They also talk about the various sessions they’ve attended at the Forum, and how each of their companies is embracing social media technology to enhance its products and services.
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